One of the planned areas of work for 4.2 is player classes, races and magic, and I have made a start on a feature branch for classes.

The basic ideas have been explored in this thread, with my views best expressed by the starting post and this example of a possible set of mage spells. I have done mostly preparatory work so far, to enable classes to be constructed using books from multiple magic realms, and to make the entirety of class definition happen in the data files. The one gameplay change so far is to redo shops a bit, so the temple has been replaced by a bookseller who sells all the town books and nothing else. Next up is to add new magic realms and classes to use them.

So, there are builds of this for Windows and macOS, and you can get source code as a zip file or by looking at the branch on Github. As I say, there's not a lot to see now except for the shop changes, but if anyone wants to look at it, think about classes, play to check it doesn't crash etc I'd be interested in feedback.

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One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

generally speaking, i would like to see spells which do more crowd control / situational spells, rather than "more of this, less of that". Such as Invisibility, Darkness, spells which affect monster's perception, temporary ESP, charm, resistances/immunities, debuffs that work, that kind of stuff.

The latest builds have a new mage class to try out (after all the other classes on the birth screen), with only 5 books. Note that for now all the old classes are still there, and beware that there are two sets of red books, with the two mage classes only able to read their own.

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One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

I like the direction the game develops currently into very much. Your ideas sound pretty coherent to me Nick Holy<->Necromancy and Nature<->Arcane.

From a game perspective the most drawback from my point of view is: you only have 5 finds, that realy matter as pure spellcaster class. Books #5 to #9. It would add much more fun and diversity if the spellcaster classes would be boosted in spells by finding scrolls / runes / other items which hold one spell each and can be learned and inscribed into spell-books.

So the town would sell empty spell books and a very few set of starting spells.
That way each caster would be / have a unique set of spells in the end.

I will give a try and test the new mage class some times.
First book detections has no combat spell anymore. So the mage should start as hand-to-hand fighter until he can buy the first attack spell book (400 gold).

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

That town book 2 looks a lot like a zangband Armageddon spellbook

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Glaurung, Father of the Dragons says, 'You cannot avoid the ballyhack.'

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

Buy a Wand of Magic Missile and some flasks of oil, maybe? I doubt that those alone would be enough to get you to level 8 though, not unless you were exceedingly careful in what you fought. They'd get you enough levels to be able to survive fighting weaker enemies...not that I particularly relish the idea of grinding for levels in order to get access to a basic attack.